


The Face in the Mirror

by procrastinatingcatt



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Supernatural Elements, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-08-20 11:37:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20227228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingcatt/pseuds/procrastinatingcatt
Summary: Lillith wakes up confused and scared in a room that seems strangely familiar to her. She needs to figure out why it does and fast because she needs to get out of there before the thing that killed everyone else gets her.





	The Face in the Mirror

There was a woman at the end of the hall whose face was distorted and blurred and was covered in a reddish substance. She was standing in front of an unfocused, uneven blur of the same reddish substance that was on the woman’s body. The woman started to walk forwards and the deep fear from that movement caused Lillith to jerk awake.

Lillith sat upright on her bed, chest heaving as she tried to calm her racing heart. She slipped out of bed and walked over to her mirror over her dresser. She spoke to herself in the mirror repeating that it wasn’t real over and over again until she finally calmed down enough to get her bearings. She looked around the room in confusion. This room felt familiar, almost as if it was a room she frequented often. But when Lillith tried to remember how this room related to her, she came up blank. When she tried to remember other things, like where she lived and how she got into this room, they also came back blank. Lillith spun around in a circle staring at things in the room trying to see if anything would jog her memory, but nothing did. She started to panic again and when she looked back to the mirror, she noticed reddish-brown lines streaking down the mirror surface tinting her face darker. 

Lillith screamed and darted out of the bedroom, running into the dark hallway outside her room. She stopped abruptly and looked down the long corridor that ran in only one direction with the room she just exited being one end of it. There were two doors farther down on either side of the hallway. The carpet looked like elephants had walked up and down the hallway with paint on their feet multiple times, leaving the carpet flattened, dull, and splotchy in color. The walls had what looked like once beautiful wood paneling and wallpaper on it, now with scratches and gouges out of the wood and the wallpaper peeling with discoloration. Lillith thought briefly about going back into the room she came from and hiding in there but then logic won out and she decided to try to find her way out of this very large house, if the size of this hallway was to be believed.

Lillith started to walk down the hallway towards the two doors and large gaping blackness beyond those. When she reached the doors she looked at both of them and one of them made her think of her brother but when she tried to chase that thought, it slipped out of her grasp. Desperate to learn more about her life, she turned towards the door and grasped the handle to turn it. The door opened easily and when she let go of the handle in shock, it fell against the wall behind it. There, in the room that she had walked into, was what resembled a dog that had been cut in half. She stumbled backwards into the hallway again with her hands covering her mouth while a memory swept her away.

~~~*~~~

_ “Go get it boy!” yelled a voice from the gardens. _

_ Exasperated, Lillith sighed and walked towards the gardens, following the voice. “Nanku!” She called out in front of her, “Get the dog out of the vegetables and flowers!” _

_ “Lillith!” exclaimed Nanku as he spun around and faced Lillith as she turned the corner to the gardens, “Don’t tell mom or dad, please!” _

_ “I think you should be more worried about me the head gardener. You know how he gets when you bring the dog to play in the gardens.” _

_ “I’m sorry!” Nanku pleaded with his hands clasped together. “Look William came back!” As the boy said that the dog appeared right next to the two siblings. _

_ “Alright,” Lillith yielded, “I won’t tell anyone but you know what happens to troublemaking kids. I don’t want you turning into an Akai from disobeying our parent’s orders.” _

_ “Not the Akai! I don’t want to become an evil kid! I wanna be regular me!” Nanku exclaimed, frightened by the mention of the Akai. _

_ “Then don’t disrespect the rules. You know what happens.” _

~~~*~~~

Occupied by the memory of her brother, Lillith bumped into the door behind her and jumped, startled. Calming her racing heart, she took deep breaths and tried not to cry as memories of her brother started to flood back into her mind. Memories of them running around the castle when they were younger and attending private lessons together. She remembered being tutored to become… she didn’t remember. But she knew it was important. Nevertheless she knew she had to continue moving through this grand building to find her way out. However the darkness in front of her was extremely dark. She took a torch that was propped on the wall  _ (when had that gotten there?) _ and started to traverse the darkness in front of her.

She made it to an intersection of hallways, with two different routes she could take. One of them was to the left and was dark. The other one was to the right and was also, surprisingly, dark. They both had the same dilapidated walls and carpets as the hallway she came from. She chose to go right with her instinct.

Down the right hallway there was a single doorway at the end with wooden double doors that looked like real wood. However, there were deep gouges in it with a reddish tint to the wooden color. Lillith slowly approached the door, her hand wavering as her apprehension increased. She slowly pushed the door open, with it creaking while it opened fully. As she peered in with the dim, flickering light, she noticed this room was very similar in condition to her brother’s. It was also in ruins, with the drapes torn and pulled off the wall, the clothes scattered around the room, and everything was coated in the reddish-brown stain Lillith had seen everywhere else in this castle.

She took a few hesitant steps into the room and turned slightly and saw an intact family portrait above a fireplace. It was of her, her brother, the dog from her memory, and two adults she instantly knew were her parents.

~~~*~~~

_ “Lillith!” came a woman’s muffled voice from outside Lillith’s room, “Come out here right now!” _

_ Lillith ignored the voice that started banging on her door, soon joined by a male’s voice. She was too focused on what she was doing. _

_ “If you don’t come out we’ll break down this door!” came the male’s voice soon followed by the doorknob jangling. _

_ Lillith scoffed under her breath and continued to draw the pentagram, occasionally dipping back into the dog’s body to replenish her supply of blood. _

_ “I know Nanku’s death was hard on you but you need to stop this! You’re becoming a monster!” cried Lillith’s mother’s voice. _

_ “I don’t give a damn mother!” Lillith yelled right back, “I’m bringing him back and you can’t make me stop!” _

_ “Lillith!” pleaded her mother, “You need to listen to reason! You don’t even know if this will work! Please stop!” _

_ “Shut up! You killed him! You get no say in this! You are the one who let him drown!” Lillith screamed to her mother, as she put the finishing touches on the star. Lillith ran around the circle to where the candles and matches were and placed them in their correct spots. _

_ In one last desperate attempt to plead with her daughter’s sanity Lillith’s mother said, “Lillith! Please, stop this madness!” _

_ Lillith didn’t respond. _

_ “Lillith?” _

~~~*~~~

Lillith gasped as she was once again pulled out of a memory, this time it brought everything else with it. She remembered being a princess, living in a castle, and being taught how to rule her kingdom as best she could. She remembered her brother and how much she loved him. She remembered when her brother and mother went to the lake and her brother slipped and drowned. She remembered grieving and finding ways to bring her brother back to life. She remembered killing her brother’s beloved dog, William, to get blood from someone he loved. She remembered doing the ritual and it not working. Most of all, she remembered the Akai appearing before her, staring at her before she blacked out.

Lillith shook as she took deep breaths in and out, trying to calm down and ignore how bleak her situation just got. If the Akai had infested her soul and made her do dark deeds then she wasn’t safe in this castle. If the Akai had killed enough people then it could walk around by itself looking like her.

Needing some reassurance, Lillith looked back towards the painting of her and her family to see it now torn and written on. There were large X’s on everyone’s eyes except Lillith’s and on their necks was the reddish-brown substance she had seen everywhere in the castle. Staring at it more Lillith realized what she should have realized a long time ago, it was blood. Transfixed, Lillith watched as two large X’s were drawn on picture Lillith’s eyes. Lillith then screamed and turned around to run out of the room, hoping to find the way out now that she had regained her memories of the castle’s layout.

She had hardly gotten two feet out of the room when she stopped dead, growing paler and paler as she took in what was right in front of her. A woman was at the end of the hall but now her face was no longer blurry and it was one that she saw in the mirror earlier that day, including the blood running down her face. Lillith looked behind the Akai version of herself to find a stack piled high of bodies. On the bottom there was the staff of the castle while Lillith’s family and dog were on the top. The woman started to walk forwards and Lillith screamed.

~~~•~~~

After weeks of no word from the royals or servants of Haarton Castle, the townspeople of Haarton Village elected three people to go up the hill to check on the household. Having expected nothing seriously wrong to have occurred, they were not exceptionally worried when no one answered the knocking on the door. But when it never was answered that day or the next, a group of ten villagers who were armed went up and opened the door. What awaited them was horror.

There were bodies cut in half and drained of blood in almost every room of the castle and nothing was spared from the blood soaking everything. When the villagers got to the daughter of the castle’s room, they discovered it in pristine condition with nothing covered in blood. They found the girl’s body lying in bed perfectly, as if she had gone to sleep and died in the night. The only unusual thing they found in that room was the word Akai carved into the girl’s forehead.

They tore apart and burned the castle to the ground to expunge the area of the cursed Akai.


End file.
